No More Polls, No More Ads, No More Politicians' Dirty Looks
Children's sermon
Illustration
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(This installment contains material for All Saints Day and Proper 26 | Ordinary Time 31 | Pentecost 23.)
This Sunday marks the final weekend prior to Election Day in America -- and for many of our people, that fact alone will be cause for many prayers of thanksgiving. Though the candidates have curtailed appearances somewhat in the campaign's final days due to the significant damage of Hurricane Sandy, this electioneering season has been a months-long slog that shows all the hallmarks of what the pundits call "the permanent campaign" -- and as voting day approaches the blizzard of advertising and sales pitches continues unabated. If the priorities of our society are judged by the amount of resources and attention given to them, then our quadrennial political argument -- and the economic status of our middle-class families, which seems to be the primary focus of both candidates -- seems to be the most important issue in our public town square. But in this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Mary Austin suggests that the lectionary gospel text for Proper 26, in which Jesus identifies the greatest commandments as loving God with all our heart (the imperative of the Sh'ma) and loving our neighbors as ourselves, puts an entirely different spin on where we should place our priorities... and the questions that we should ask of ourselves and of our leaders. If the most important thing in our lives truly is God -- loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength -- then we have more eternal concerns than obsessing over elections and the amount of our paychecks... for in the kingdom of God, upward mobility is measured in spiritual rather than economic terms.
Many congregations will observe All Saints Sunday this week, and team member Dean Feldmeyer offers a meditation on what really makes up a saint. Dean reminds us that saints aren't those who lead perfect lives without sin, but those who do the small, mundane tasks that bring the kingdom of God to life -- in other words, the daily lifeblood of the church. Dean reflects on his personal experience of some of the saints who made a difference in his life, and he notes that like every other relationship in this world, being a saint is never as simple or as easy as it seems... but the Lord -- and our family of faith -- is always there to help us through.
No More Polls, No More Ads, No More Politicians' Dirty Looks
by Mary Austin
Mark 12:28-34
Very soon, the election will be over. It's all-consuming now, but a few more days will bring an end to the ads, the opinions, and the robocalls. By that time, an estimated billion dollars will have been spent on advertising. As we take our yard signs down and recycle the piles of campaign literature, we might wonder: "Now what?"
If the polls are right, a little over half the country will be happy and a little under half the country will be upset. It just remains to be seen which half is which. In addition to the election at the top of the ticket, state and local races will also cause people to either rejoice or lament.
In truth, the election is a distraction from what we are really supposed to be doing. Whether it's an aggravating distraction or a pleasant one, whether it's a hopeful use of time or one that makes us angry, the end of the election season returns us to our everyday lives... and to the campaign that never ends.
THE WORLD
A colleague observed the other day that of all the notable days in his life -- the births of his kids, the deaths of his parents, his wedding, and the days of starting a new job -- he has no idea who was the U.S. president at the time. The people and events that shaped his life happened almost independently of whoever was the president. Of course the presidency is important and the president has the ability to affect change for many people, but the core of our lives happens no matter who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The person who does shape our lives every day is here in this story from Mark's gospel.
THE WORD
As we find Jesus, he has finished his last miracle and now is in Jerusalem, winding up his teaching. As if to sum it all up -- all the miracles, sayings, instructions to his followers -- Jesus has the opportunity to answer the question: "Which commandment is the first of all?" What's the bottom line in all of this, the scribe asks.
As Brian Findlayson writes, this is not as simple as it seems to us, looking backward through the lens of Jesus' teaching: "Religious Judaism in the first century had identified 613 individual commandments of the Law. Much time was spent grading them according to importance, and this because keeping them secured a place in the kingdom." Like the question about paying taxes to Rome, this question has unseen layers of complexity.
As David Ewart notes on his blog Holy Textures: "No one in that crowd of both opponents and admirers would dispute 'Love of God' as the greatest commandment. But when Jesus goes on and links it to 'Love of neighbor as oneself,' he has lifted attachment to the welfare of one's neighbors above all other duties and obligations, including -- gasp! -- religious ones." Standing in the Temple courtyard, Jesus makes the claim that love of neighbor is a higher calling than the religiously required sacrifices.
The bottom line is our enduring call to be followers not of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but of Jesus. The bottom line is our call to love and serve our God with all that we are, and in all that we do. On his way to the cross Jesus sums it all up for us and it doesn't have much to do with who's president. The races that consume us now will inevitably fade and the whole campaign will shrink in our minds to "binders full of women" and Big Bird. The enduring thing will be our relationship with Jesus and his campaign to convert our lives to his image.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
The sermon might encourage people to think about how they live a layered life, mixing being disciples of Jesus in with being accountants, teachers, social workers, parents, managers, and family members. How do we live our Christian vocation alongside our work? How does it fill (or not) our daily lives?
Or, following the example of the scribe in the story, we might preach about the questions we ask and how they lead us to the truth we need to know. As Robin Meyers writes in The Christian Century: "Something tells me this scribe knew the answer (the Shema) before he asked the question. My students at the university do this all the time. They ask me questions they already know the answers to, just to hear me say it, just to have a kind of personal, extracurricular 'moment.'... You see, there are two kinds of student questions. The ones they ask in class, which are utilitarian in nature: 'How many absences are we allowed in here anyway?' And the kind they ask after class, which are invariably philosophical: 'So what is your position on the death penalty anyway?' Or, 'So, like, were you a hippie when you were in college?' These are not just 'questions,' but indirect pleas for relationship." Questions lead to connections when they're sincerely asked and answered.
Questions can draw us deeper into relationship with each other, and the right questions can draw us deeper into relationship with God. Questions like: "Is my work using the talents God gave me?" Or, "Does my everyday life show evidence of God's presence?" Or, "If I were at the end of my life, would I be satisfied with how I've spent the time?"
There are no campaign commercials for this part of our life, no yard signs, no polls to see if we're doing it right -- but this is the part that endures long past election day. No matter who wins in November, as people of faith, we know who our leader is.
SECOND THOUGHTS
For All the Saints
by Dean Feldmeyer
Sociologist and author Tex Sample tells this story from his childhood:
My Sunday school teacher in the fifth grade was a man that I'll call Mr. Archon. Mr. A was the wealthiest, most important man in our town. And he was a terrific Sunday school teacher, in the sense that he knew how to talk to us fifth-grade boys. He knew things we were interested in and he just knew how to say 'em. And he had what Max Weber called charisma.
At the same time it seemed that about once a month he would teach us that black people were inferior, that they were subhuman, that slavery had been right, that it was biblical, and that we southern boys should defend segregation with our very lives. He told us that we especially had to protect southern white girls.
It just so happened that in that same church we had a retired missionary named Miss Hattie Bowie. She'd been a missionary in Korea for 30 years. I never remember a direct confrontation between her and Mr. Archon, but it seemed like every time Mr. Archon would say some of those terrible things, she had some way of countering it.
She would take us to her house, and she had wonderful artifacts out of Korea. She had small houses that Korean people had made. She had wonderful paintings with a kind of peculiar method that they had used. She had, of course, Korean toys and Korean dolls that we so enjoyed. It was my first experience with a culture radically different from my own.
She also taught us songs. She taught us the song "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world... red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." And she taught us "Jesus Loves Me" in Korean, and I still remember it.
That's been a long time ago, but what I remember is that Mr. Archon took the racist story and put God's story in it to support the racist story. Miss Hattie Bowie took the racist story, put it into God's story, and dismantled it.
I have wondered so many times what would have happened to me if it had not been for Miss Hattie Bowie.
-- Living the Questions, by David M. Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy (HarperCollins, 2012)
* * *
All Saints Sunday is when we, as Christians, celebrate the Miss Hattie Bowies in our lives. It is when we remember and give thanks to God for the Christian people, living and dead, who have helped us traverse faith's path.
Saints, as they are referred to in scripture, are not perfect or iconic followers of Jesus. When Paul speaks of the saints, it's always with a lowercase "s." The saints are just the people of the church. The saints are those who fill the pews, teach the Sunday school classes, paint the nursery, sing in the choir, run the sound system, and do the thousand other things that are required for the people of God to be God's church.
They are especially those Christian people who have accompanied other Christian people along the sometimes steep, sometimes bumpy, sometimes narrow, and sometimes difficult path of faith that leads to the kind of living that Jesus refers to as the kingdom of God.
In my own life I remember Ralph B., who always crouched down to shake my hand when I was a child. And Mrs. M., who I thought lived in the church kitchen and always baked enough goodies to have a plate set aside for the children. There was Mrs. B., who first taught me that it was okay to think critically about the scriptures. And Mr. G., who would sneak our fourth grade Sunday school class across the street to Teeter's Drug Store and buy us sodas and hold our class in a couple of booths at the soda fountain. I remember Mr. A. and Mr. B., who ran the Boy Scout troop and taught us how to cook breakfast with an empty coffee can and a candle. And I remember Mrs. G and her sister, who led our Sunday school opening exercises, played the piano like we were in a honky-tonk saloon, and taught me to love the old hymns.
Of course, there were my mom and dad, who dragged me, sometimes kicking and screaming, to church every Sunday and taught me what it meant to be "faithful" to the vows I had taken at my confirmation.
There was never one individual who came to me and said, "Dean, have you ever considered the ministry?" Rather, thanks to all these folks and a host of others, the ministry was just always sort of "there" as a career option for me. And it was through them that God called me to this career.
It hasn't always been easy, you understand. My relationship with the church has been as rocky and tumultuous as any marriage, any family relationship ever is -- but in the end I have always come back because, well, because it's family.
A few weeks ago, folk singer Arlo Guthrie lost his wife Jackie to cancer. He wrote on Facebook about their relationship, and as I read it I was amazed at how accurately it also described my relationship with the church:
There are loves, and there are LOVES. Ours was and will continue to be what it has always been -- a very great love. We didn't always like each other. From time to time there were moments when we'd have our bags packed by the door. But there was this great love that we shared from the moment we met -- a recognition -- It's YOU! And we would always return to it year after year, decade after decade, and I believe life after lifetime.
Happy All Saints Sunday!
ILLUSTRATIONS
A movement that began in 2008 at one church -- Springdale Mennonite Church in Waynesboro, Virginia -- has now spread to 46 states and 300 congregations. The tradition is called Election Day Communion. On Election Day, after voting, everyone comes to church to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. This is to demonstrate unity in the midst of partisan politics. Though the individual kneeling next to you may have voted differently, together you both comprise the Body of Christ.
Mark Schloneger, who led the first Election Day Communion four years ago, said: "Our participation in the party system, Democrat and Republican, has caused us to be passionate about things that look very different from the passion of Jesus. That's where I believe we need to repent."
Love is realizing that our unity and commonality is always centered on Christ and his table of reconciliation.
* * *
When you preach this Sunday, the election will only be days away. Some of your congregants may be balls of anxiety who only made it out of bed and across the threshold of the church building because their guy was half a percentage point up that morning. Some of your congregants may remain blissfully unaware politically. Some may not have the emotional energy or the time to tune in, because they're in some sort of immediate crisis. But there may also be some who are just plain over it. They have had enough of negative attack ads and the 24-hour news cycle's obsession with charting each candidate's latest gaffe or zinger. Maybe they think Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are old news, and they've moved on to use their time in more interesting ways. Maybe they've now partnered with BBC to pick their own celebrity president.
Feeling a little bewildered or bored yourself? Then check out BBC's pool of candidates: "We have gathered runners and riders from across the celebrity spectrum -- from sports stars to celebrity chefs -- for a more glittering election in 2012." Answer deep, searching questions like...
How old should your president be?
A bright, young thing.
OR
A national treasure.
Should your president be sporty?
Yes. I want an all-action superhero.
OR
Nope. A couch potato is fine by me.
Are looks important?
Yes. Eye candy, please.
OR
No. Brains over brawn, thanks.
I answered the questions a few different ways to see who my celebrity president pick would be. Looks like I'm headed for Scarlett Johansen or Tina Turner or Jake Gyllenhaal. What about you?
But what if post-election we all moved on to a new candidate? What if we cast our vote for Jesus? What kind of questions would lead us to that choice? If we checked his box, what would the next four years of our lives look like? What kind of policies would guide our lives if we were ruled by love?
-- Leah Lonsbury
* * *
According to John McTernan, a right-wing chaplain and blogger, Hurricane Sandy can be directly blamed on the LGBT community, President Obama, and candidate Romney. "God is systematically destroying America," McTernan writes. "Just look at what has happened this year."
So what is it that McTernan thinks has ticked God off to the point of annihilating anger unleashed in natural disasters? Here's his list...
* Obama backing the Muslim Brotherhood and its attempts to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem.
* Romney's desire to fill the ranks of the military, the Boy Scouts, and the Republican Party with homosexuals.
* Southern Decadence, a festival that bills itself as "the top gay Labor Day weekend destination," continues each year in New Orleans despite God's attempts via Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac to squash it.
God is bent on destroying America, McTernan writes, because the American church isn't acting like the church. He continues...
With all of this, there is almost zero repentance by the church: zero! The fear of God has disappeared from His people. The church in America is now EXACTLY like ancient Israel before the Babylonians destroyed them. Both ancient Israel and the modern American church completely lost the fear of God.
So what should the church act like?
Jesus answered, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There is no other commandment greater than these." Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher... this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." (Mark 12:29-34)
Perhaps the church ought to act less like the church and more like Jesus. Perhaps we ought to be less concerned with being religious and right (as in correct) and more concerned with loving, reconciling, and connecting -- being one as our God is one.
(Stephen Prothero, Boston University religion scholar and author of The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation, has more for us to consider in his blog post "My Take: God not in the whirlwinds of Sandy, presidential race".)
* * *
On October 16, Anat Hoffman led 250 Jewish women in prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. But Hoffman -- the leader of the Women of the Wall movement -- was arrested and incarcerated by Israeli authorities for "disturbing public order," all because she wore a brightly colored prayer shawl and violated the mandate of Orthodox Judaism that only men can pray at one of the Jews' most sacred sites.
Hoffman's arrest inspired a worldwide protest against the religious subjugation of women. On October 22, women across the globe from Manhattan to Mozambique said the Sh'ma Yisrael prayer -- "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" -- the same prayer Hoffman intoned before her arrest. The purpose of the vigil was to end segregation.
Loving our neighbor is the recognition of the equality of all individuals.
* * *
Antoni Dobrowolski, the oldest surviving prisoner at the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, recently died at the age of 108. Dobrowolski spent most of his detention at Auschwitz, before being moved from camp to camp with the approaching Russian army.
Dobrowolski was not a Jew but a free Polish citizen during the Nazi occupation of Poland; yet he was imprisoned for committing a "hedonistic" crime against the Third Reich. The Germans had outlawed any education in Poland beyond four years of elementary school, as they considered the Poles to be inferior and believed education would interfere with their becoming a "slave race."
In defiance of the Germans, Dobrowolski along with many others, continued to educate students beyond the fourth grade in underground schools. For his efforts to educate, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and sent to Auschwitz.
Love has no boundaries of sacrifice and assaults social injustice.
* * *
Consider the shape of the cross; it visually summarizes for us the two great commandments. The vertical beam is the primary one, anchoring the cross in the earth so that it can stand. It reaches upward to direct our love to God. The horizontal beam is placed on the vertical beam, which gives it support. Stretching horizontally, it directs our love to those around us, the neighbor. Jesus himself demonstrated wholehearted love for God and for the neighbor on the cross itself.
* * *
What, in fact, could be more "political," a more complete and basal challenge to the kingdoms of this world, to its generals and its lords, both to those who hold power and to those who would seize it, than one who says that his kingdom is not of this world and yet prays that the kingdom of his Father will come and his will be done on earth? This is an aspiration for the world more revolutionary, a disturbance of the status quo more seismic, an allegiance more disloyal, a menace more intimidating, than any program that simply meets force with force and matches loveless injustice with loveless vengeance. Here is a whole new ordering of human life, as intolerable to insurrectionists as to oppressors. It promises that forgiveness, freedom, love, and self-negation, in all their feeble ineffectiveness, will prove more powerful and creative than every system and every countersystem that subdivides the human race into rich and poor, comrades and enemies, insiders and outsiders, allies and adversaries. What could an earthly power so in love with power as to divinize it in the person of its emperor, do with such dangerous powerlessness but capture and destroy it? It could change everything were it not extinguished and speedily.
-- Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 49-50
* * *
Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
-- Teilhard de Chardin
* * *
A mother I know has a different way of asking the same question ["How was your day?"]. As she tucks her children into bed each night... she asks them a question: "Where did you meet God today?" And they tell her, one by one: a teacher helped me, there was a homeless person in the park, I saw a tree with lots of flowers in it. She tells them where she met God too. Before the children drop off to sleep, the stuff of this day has become the substance of their prayer.
-- Dorothy Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices For Opening the Gift of Time (Jossey-Bass: 2001)
* * *
In her message "Standing in a Cloud" from September 18, 2011, Quaker singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer writes about her experience in Dharmasala, India while on tour:
For so many people the Dalai Lama has become a symbol for a more peaceful world, a less violent world, for a daily practice of love. I sense that people come here to get just a little bit closer to those ideas and those hopes. It is hopeful to be here... so many people leaning, yearning for something better, something simple and true -- like love. So many prayers have been said here. Sent into the air on the breeze through colored flags of fabric. I've been standing here on the balcony of this place and you can feel them as they move in the mist.
I think this is the place to be to contemplate what comes next. To ask: "What do we do with all the sorrows of the world?"†"What do we do with all that love we still have for every beloved person, place, or time we have now or have lost?" It seems to me that love can dissipate -- we let it spread out and become a mist over time. Love with no place to go can transform and become something that looks like emptiness or even a fist. But love carried forward is enormously powerful. We can decide to keep all that love vibrant, breathing, and deepening. We can lavish it on our dogs, give it with faithfulness to our partners, friends and family, a bit of land, a river or stream, we can send it out into a worried world to mend the seams where they are pulling thin and worn.
In this week's Old Testament passage, Ruth had a choice to make about what she would do with her sorrow and her love. She chose, as Carrie says, the enormous power of "love carried forward," love that is "vibrant, breathing, and deepening."
What will we do with our sorrows, the world's sorrow? What will we do with our love in world?
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: Let us praise God as long as we live;
People: we will sing praises to our God all our life long.
Leader: Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
People: When their breath departs, they return to the earth.
Leader: Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
People: whose hope is in God who made heaven and earth.
OR
Leader: The earth is God's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;
People: for God has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.
Leader: Who shall ascend the hill of God? And who shall stand in his holy place?
People: Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and who do not swear deceitfully.
Leader: They will receive blessing from God and vindication from the God of their salvation.
People: Such is the company of those who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
"For All the Saints"
found in:
UMH: 711
H82: 287
PH: 526
AAHH: 339
NNBH: 301
NCH: 299
CH: 637
LBW: 174
ELA: 422
"Your Love, O God"
found in:
UMH: 120
ELA: 71
"Lord, Speak to Me"
found in:
UMH: 463
PH: 426
NCH: 531
ELA: 676
"The Gift of Love"
found in:
UMH: 408
AAHH: 522
CH: 526
Renew: 155
"Where Charity and Love Prevail"
found in:
UMH: 549
H82: 581
NCH: 396
LBW: 126
ELA: 359
"Sweet, Sweet Spirit"
found in:
UMH: 334
AAHH: 326
NNBH: 127
NCH: 293
CH: 261
CCB: 7
"All Who Love and Serve Your City"
found in:
UMH: 433
H82: 570/571
PH: 413
CH: 670
LBW: 436
ELA: 724
"What Does the Lord Require"
found in:
UMH: 441
H82: 605
PH: 405
CH: 659
"I Am Loved"
found in:
CCB: 80
"They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love"
found in:
CCB: 78
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who invites all your children to reflect your image: Grant us joy as we celebrate the lives of those who shared your love and grace with us and helped us on our journey with you; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
O God who is love: Grant us the grace to grow in love for you and in love and service to others that we may truly be your saints; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We give you thanks, O God, for those who have come before us in the faith, from those of the biblical witness throughout history to those who have guided us personally. We thank you that they were willing to let you shine in and through their lives. Help us to be open to your Spirit that we may also reflect your love and grace and glory. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to act in love as your saints.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have been created in your image and filled with your Spirit and yet we do not reflect your love and grace as we ought. We are more concerned about what people think of us than we are about what they see of you in us. Forgive us and help us to live out of the abundance of your love that those around us will be touched by your grace. Amen.
Leader: God loves us and claims us as children, reflection of the divine. Know that God desires nothing more than to fill us with love that spills over into the lives of others.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord's Prayer)
We worship and adore you, O God, for you are the one who fills all in all. You are the energy and pulse that moves through all of creation.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have been created in your image and filled with your Spirit and yet we do not reflect your love and grace as we ought. We are more concerned about what people think of us than we are about what they see of you in us. Forgive us and help us to live out of the abundance of your love that those around us will be touched by your grace.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which you have made your presence known to us. We thank you especially for those who have come into our lives and touched us with your grace. We have felt the influence of some of those down through the ages and from others who have walked among us.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your creation and especially for your children who have not felt your loving kindness in their lives. We pray for those who have not had those around them who showed your love but instead showed violence and hatred. We pray that as you move in love among them we may move in love among those around us.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father... Amen.
(or if the Lord's Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children's Sermon Starter
If your worship space has stained-glass windows with biblical or other figures of the faith, talk to the children about how the light coming through the windows makes them beautiful. Similarly, when we let God's light of love shine in us by doing kind acts and saying kind words, we are beautiful as well.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Love Your Neighbor
Mark 12:28-34
Object: a smashed tin can (from the trash or recycle bin)
Good morning, boys and girls! How many of you ever have to carry out the trash? (let the children answer) I brought along some of my trash this morning. This trash is ready to be recycled. This trash makes me think of this morning's lesson.
I want to tell you a story about a little boy who lived next door to an older man. In church the boy heard the story about loving your neighbor as yourself. He wasn't certain that he knew what that meant. He hoped that he loved his neighbor as himself, but he wasn't certain how to do it.
One day he was going out the door to play. It was trash day. Everyone on his street had trash and recycling containers ready to be picked up. He noticed that for some reason his neighbor's trash had been knocked over. The trash was all over the sidewalk. Have any of you ever noticed this on your street? (let them answer) The boy's neighbor was an older man who walked with a cane. It was hard for him to stoop over. Without thinking, the boy went over and picked up the trash that was on the sidewalk. He put the trash back into the container. Then he went on his way. His neighbor was watching from his window. He was very happy to see that the boy picked up his trash. It made the older man feel good about the boy.
Do any of you know why this trash of mine (hold up the can) and my story about the boy picking up the trash reminds me of loving your neighbor? (let them answer) That's right. The boy didn't think about it at all, but he loved his neighbor as himself, didn't he? He loved his neighbor when he picked up the older man's trash. The boy didn't do it so that he would get a reward. He didn't do it because someone asked him. He did it really without thinking. He did it because he loved his neighbor.
Here's what I want you to remember this week. Jesus said that we should love God with all our hearts. Jesus also said that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This week see if there is something you can do for your neighbor. It might be just saying hello to your neighbor. It might be that you may pick up some trash of your neighbor's without even thinking of it. Remember to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, November 4, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
This Sunday marks the final weekend prior to Election Day in America -- and for many of our people, that fact alone will be cause for many prayers of thanksgiving. Though the candidates have curtailed appearances somewhat in the campaign's final days due to the significant damage of Hurricane Sandy, this electioneering season has been a months-long slog that shows all the hallmarks of what the pundits call "the permanent campaign" -- and as voting day approaches the blizzard of advertising and sales pitches continues unabated. If the priorities of our society are judged by the amount of resources and attention given to them, then our quadrennial political argument -- and the economic status of our middle-class families, which seems to be the primary focus of both candidates -- seems to be the most important issue in our public town square. But in this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Mary Austin suggests that the lectionary gospel text for Proper 26, in which Jesus identifies the greatest commandments as loving God with all our heart (the imperative of the Sh'ma) and loving our neighbors as ourselves, puts an entirely different spin on where we should place our priorities... and the questions that we should ask of ourselves and of our leaders. If the most important thing in our lives truly is God -- loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength -- then we have more eternal concerns than obsessing over elections and the amount of our paychecks... for in the kingdom of God, upward mobility is measured in spiritual rather than economic terms.
Many congregations will observe All Saints Sunday this week, and team member Dean Feldmeyer offers a meditation on what really makes up a saint. Dean reminds us that saints aren't those who lead perfect lives without sin, but those who do the small, mundane tasks that bring the kingdom of God to life -- in other words, the daily lifeblood of the church. Dean reflects on his personal experience of some of the saints who made a difference in his life, and he notes that like every other relationship in this world, being a saint is never as simple or as easy as it seems... but the Lord -- and our family of faith -- is always there to help us through.
No More Polls, No More Ads, No More Politicians' Dirty Looks
by Mary Austin
Mark 12:28-34
Very soon, the election will be over. It's all-consuming now, but a few more days will bring an end to the ads, the opinions, and the robocalls. By that time, an estimated billion dollars will have been spent on advertising. As we take our yard signs down and recycle the piles of campaign literature, we might wonder: "Now what?"
If the polls are right, a little over half the country will be happy and a little under half the country will be upset. It just remains to be seen which half is which. In addition to the election at the top of the ticket, state and local races will also cause people to either rejoice or lament.
In truth, the election is a distraction from what we are really supposed to be doing. Whether it's an aggravating distraction or a pleasant one, whether it's a hopeful use of time or one that makes us angry, the end of the election season returns us to our everyday lives... and to the campaign that never ends.
THE WORLD
A colleague observed the other day that of all the notable days in his life -- the births of his kids, the deaths of his parents, his wedding, and the days of starting a new job -- he has no idea who was the U.S. president at the time. The people and events that shaped his life happened almost independently of whoever was the president. Of course the presidency is important and the president has the ability to affect change for many people, but the core of our lives happens no matter who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The person who does shape our lives every day is here in this story from Mark's gospel.
THE WORD
As we find Jesus, he has finished his last miracle and now is in Jerusalem, winding up his teaching. As if to sum it all up -- all the miracles, sayings, instructions to his followers -- Jesus has the opportunity to answer the question: "Which commandment is the first of all?" What's the bottom line in all of this, the scribe asks.
As Brian Findlayson writes, this is not as simple as it seems to us, looking backward through the lens of Jesus' teaching: "Religious Judaism in the first century had identified 613 individual commandments of the Law. Much time was spent grading them according to importance, and this because keeping them secured a place in the kingdom." Like the question about paying taxes to Rome, this question has unseen layers of complexity.
As David Ewart notes on his blog Holy Textures: "No one in that crowd of both opponents and admirers would dispute 'Love of God' as the greatest commandment. But when Jesus goes on and links it to 'Love of neighbor as oneself,' he has lifted attachment to the welfare of one's neighbors above all other duties and obligations, including -- gasp! -- religious ones." Standing in the Temple courtyard, Jesus makes the claim that love of neighbor is a higher calling than the religiously required sacrifices.
The bottom line is our enduring call to be followers not of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but of Jesus. The bottom line is our call to love and serve our God with all that we are, and in all that we do. On his way to the cross Jesus sums it all up for us and it doesn't have much to do with who's president. The races that consume us now will inevitably fade and the whole campaign will shrink in our minds to "binders full of women" and Big Bird. The enduring thing will be our relationship with Jesus and his campaign to convert our lives to his image.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
The sermon might encourage people to think about how they live a layered life, mixing being disciples of Jesus in with being accountants, teachers, social workers, parents, managers, and family members. How do we live our Christian vocation alongside our work? How does it fill (or not) our daily lives?
Or, following the example of the scribe in the story, we might preach about the questions we ask and how they lead us to the truth we need to know. As Robin Meyers writes in The Christian Century: "Something tells me this scribe knew the answer (the Shema) before he asked the question. My students at the university do this all the time. They ask me questions they already know the answers to, just to hear me say it, just to have a kind of personal, extracurricular 'moment.'... You see, there are two kinds of student questions. The ones they ask in class, which are utilitarian in nature: 'How many absences are we allowed in here anyway?' And the kind they ask after class, which are invariably philosophical: 'So what is your position on the death penalty anyway?' Or, 'So, like, were you a hippie when you were in college?' These are not just 'questions,' but indirect pleas for relationship." Questions lead to connections when they're sincerely asked and answered.
Questions can draw us deeper into relationship with each other, and the right questions can draw us deeper into relationship with God. Questions like: "Is my work using the talents God gave me?" Or, "Does my everyday life show evidence of God's presence?" Or, "If I were at the end of my life, would I be satisfied with how I've spent the time?"
There are no campaign commercials for this part of our life, no yard signs, no polls to see if we're doing it right -- but this is the part that endures long past election day. No matter who wins in November, as people of faith, we know who our leader is.
SECOND THOUGHTS
For All the Saints
by Dean Feldmeyer
Sociologist and author Tex Sample tells this story from his childhood:
My Sunday school teacher in the fifth grade was a man that I'll call Mr. Archon. Mr. A was the wealthiest, most important man in our town. And he was a terrific Sunday school teacher, in the sense that he knew how to talk to us fifth-grade boys. He knew things we were interested in and he just knew how to say 'em. And he had what Max Weber called charisma.
At the same time it seemed that about once a month he would teach us that black people were inferior, that they were subhuman, that slavery had been right, that it was biblical, and that we southern boys should defend segregation with our very lives. He told us that we especially had to protect southern white girls.
It just so happened that in that same church we had a retired missionary named Miss Hattie Bowie. She'd been a missionary in Korea for 30 years. I never remember a direct confrontation between her and Mr. Archon, but it seemed like every time Mr. Archon would say some of those terrible things, she had some way of countering it.
She would take us to her house, and she had wonderful artifacts out of Korea. She had small houses that Korean people had made. She had wonderful paintings with a kind of peculiar method that they had used. She had, of course, Korean toys and Korean dolls that we so enjoyed. It was my first experience with a culture radically different from my own.
She also taught us songs. She taught us the song "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world... red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." And she taught us "Jesus Loves Me" in Korean, and I still remember it.
That's been a long time ago, but what I remember is that Mr. Archon took the racist story and put God's story in it to support the racist story. Miss Hattie Bowie took the racist story, put it into God's story, and dismantled it.
I have wondered so many times what would have happened to me if it had not been for Miss Hattie Bowie.
-- Living the Questions, by David M. Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy (HarperCollins, 2012)
* * *
All Saints Sunday is when we, as Christians, celebrate the Miss Hattie Bowies in our lives. It is when we remember and give thanks to God for the Christian people, living and dead, who have helped us traverse faith's path.
Saints, as they are referred to in scripture, are not perfect or iconic followers of Jesus. When Paul speaks of the saints, it's always with a lowercase "s." The saints are just the people of the church. The saints are those who fill the pews, teach the Sunday school classes, paint the nursery, sing in the choir, run the sound system, and do the thousand other things that are required for the people of God to be God's church.
They are especially those Christian people who have accompanied other Christian people along the sometimes steep, sometimes bumpy, sometimes narrow, and sometimes difficult path of faith that leads to the kind of living that Jesus refers to as the kingdom of God.
In my own life I remember Ralph B., who always crouched down to shake my hand when I was a child. And Mrs. M., who I thought lived in the church kitchen and always baked enough goodies to have a plate set aside for the children. There was Mrs. B., who first taught me that it was okay to think critically about the scriptures. And Mr. G., who would sneak our fourth grade Sunday school class across the street to Teeter's Drug Store and buy us sodas and hold our class in a couple of booths at the soda fountain. I remember Mr. A. and Mr. B., who ran the Boy Scout troop and taught us how to cook breakfast with an empty coffee can and a candle. And I remember Mrs. G and her sister, who led our Sunday school opening exercises, played the piano like we were in a honky-tonk saloon, and taught me to love the old hymns.
Of course, there were my mom and dad, who dragged me, sometimes kicking and screaming, to church every Sunday and taught me what it meant to be "faithful" to the vows I had taken at my confirmation.
There was never one individual who came to me and said, "Dean, have you ever considered the ministry?" Rather, thanks to all these folks and a host of others, the ministry was just always sort of "there" as a career option for me. And it was through them that God called me to this career.
It hasn't always been easy, you understand. My relationship with the church has been as rocky and tumultuous as any marriage, any family relationship ever is -- but in the end I have always come back because, well, because it's family.
A few weeks ago, folk singer Arlo Guthrie lost his wife Jackie to cancer. He wrote on Facebook about their relationship, and as I read it I was amazed at how accurately it also described my relationship with the church:
There are loves, and there are LOVES. Ours was and will continue to be what it has always been -- a very great love. We didn't always like each other. From time to time there were moments when we'd have our bags packed by the door. But there was this great love that we shared from the moment we met -- a recognition -- It's YOU! And we would always return to it year after year, decade after decade, and I believe life after lifetime.
Happy All Saints Sunday!
ILLUSTRATIONS
A movement that began in 2008 at one church -- Springdale Mennonite Church in Waynesboro, Virginia -- has now spread to 46 states and 300 congregations. The tradition is called Election Day Communion. On Election Day, after voting, everyone comes to church to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. This is to demonstrate unity in the midst of partisan politics. Though the individual kneeling next to you may have voted differently, together you both comprise the Body of Christ.
Mark Schloneger, who led the first Election Day Communion four years ago, said: "Our participation in the party system, Democrat and Republican, has caused us to be passionate about things that look very different from the passion of Jesus. That's where I believe we need to repent."
Love is realizing that our unity and commonality is always centered on Christ and his table of reconciliation.
* * *
When you preach this Sunday, the election will only be days away. Some of your congregants may be balls of anxiety who only made it out of bed and across the threshold of the church building because their guy was half a percentage point up that morning. Some of your congregants may remain blissfully unaware politically. Some may not have the emotional energy or the time to tune in, because they're in some sort of immediate crisis. But there may also be some who are just plain over it. They have had enough of negative attack ads and the 24-hour news cycle's obsession with charting each candidate's latest gaffe or zinger. Maybe they think Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are old news, and they've moved on to use their time in more interesting ways. Maybe they've now partnered with BBC to pick their own celebrity president.
Feeling a little bewildered or bored yourself? Then check out BBC's pool of candidates: "We have gathered runners and riders from across the celebrity spectrum -- from sports stars to celebrity chefs -- for a more glittering election in 2012." Answer deep, searching questions like...
How old should your president be?
A bright, young thing.
OR
A national treasure.
Should your president be sporty?
Yes. I want an all-action superhero.
OR
Nope. A couch potato is fine by me.
Are looks important?
Yes. Eye candy, please.
OR
No. Brains over brawn, thanks.
I answered the questions a few different ways to see who my celebrity president pick would be. Looks like I'm headed for Scarlett Johansen or Tina Turner or Jake Gyllenhaal. What about you?
But what if post-election we all moved on to a new candidate? What if we cast our vote for Jesus? What kind of questions would lead us to that choice? If we checked his box, what would the next four years of our lives look like? What kind of policies would guide our lives if we were ruled by love?
-- Leah Lonsbury
* * *
According to John McTernan, a right-wing chaplain and blogger, Hurricane Sandy can be directly blamed on the LGBT community, President Obama, and candidate Romney. "God is systematically destroying America," McTernan writes. "Just look at what has happened this year."
So what is it that McTernan thinks has ticked God off to the point of annihilating anger unleashed in natural disasters? Here's his list...
* Obama backing the Muslim Brotherhood and its attempts to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem.
* Romney's desire to fill the ranks of the military, the Boy Scouts, and the Republican Party with homosexuals.
* Southern Decadence, a festival that bills itself as "the top gay Labor Day weekend destination," continues each year in New Orleans despite God's attempts via Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac to squash it.
God is bent on destroying America, McTernan writes, because the American church isn't acting like the church. He continues...
With all of this, there is almost zero repentance by the church: zero! The fear of God has disappeared from His people. The church in America is now EXACTLY like ancient Israel before the Babylonians destroyed them. Both ancient Israel and the modern American church completely lost the fear of God.
So what should the church act like?
Jesus answered, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There is no other commandment greater than these." Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher... this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." (Mark 12:29-34)
Perhaps the church ought to act less like the church and more like Jesus. Perhaps we ought to be less concerned with being religious and right (as in correct) and more concerned with loving, reconciling, and connecting -- being one as our God is one.
(Stephen Prothero, Boston University religion scholar and author of The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation, has more for us to consider in his blog post "My Take: God not in the whirlwinds of Sandy, presidential race".)
* * *
On October 16, Anat Hoffman led 250 Jewish women in prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. But Hoffman -- the leader of the Women of the Wall movement -- was arrested and incarcerated by Israeli authorities for "disturbing public order," all because she wore a brightly colored prayer shawl and violated the mandate of Orthodox Judaism that only men can pray at one of the Jews' most sacred sites.
Hoffman's arrest inspired a worldwide protest against the religious subjugation of women. On October 22, women across the globe from Manhattan to Mozambique said the Sh'ma Yisrael prayer -- "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" -- the same prayer Hoffman intoned before her arrest. The purpose of the vigil was to end segregation.
Loving our neighbor is the recognition of the equality of all individuals.
* * *
Antoni Dobrowolski, the oldest surviving prisoner at the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, recently died at the age of 108. Dobrowolski spent most of his detention at Auschwitz, before being moved from camp to camp with the approaching Russian army.
Dobrowolski was not a Jew but a free Polish citizen during the Nazi occupation of Poland; yet he was imprisoned for committing a "hedonistic" crime against the Third Reich. The Germans had outlawed any education in Poland beyond four years of elementary school, as they considered the Poles to be inferior and believed education would interfere with their becoming a "slave race."
In defiance of the Germans, Dobrowolski along with many others, continued to educate students beyond the fourth grade in underground schools. For his efforts to educate, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and sent to Auschwitz.
Love has no boundaries of sacrifice and assaults social injustice.
* * *
Consider the shape of the cross; it visually summarizes for us the two great commandments. The vertical beam is the primary one, anchoring the cross in the earth so that it can stand. It reaches upward to direct our love to God. The horizontal beam is placed on the vertical beam, which gives it support. Stretching horizontally, it directs our love to those around us, the neighbor. Jesus himself demonstrated wholehearted love for God and for the neighbor on the cross itself.
* * *
What, in fact, could be more "political," a more complete and basal challenge to the kingdoms of this world, to its generals and its lords, both to those who hold power and to those who would seize it, than one who says that his kingdom is not of this world and yet prays that the kingdom of his Father will come and his will be done on earth? This is an aspiration for the world more revolutionary, a disturbance of the status quo more seismic, an allegiance more disloyal, a menace more intimidating, than any program that simply meets force with force and matches loveless injustice with loveless vengeance. Here is a whole new ordering of human life, as intolerable to insurrectionists as to oppressors. It promises that forgiveness, freedom, love, and self-negation, in all their feeble ineffectiveness, will prove more powerful and creative than every system and every countersystem that subdivides the human race into rich and poor, comrades and enemies, insiders and outsiders, allies and adversaries. What could an earthly power so in love with power as to divinize it in the person of its emperor, do with such dangerous powerlessness but capture and destroy it? It could change everything were it not extinguished and speedily.
-- Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 49-50
* * *
Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
-- Teilhard de Chardin
* * *
A mother I know has a different way of asking the same question ["How was your day?"]. As she tucks her children into bed each night... she asks them a question: "Where did you meet God today?" And they tell her, one by one: a teacher helped me, there was a homeless person in the park, I saw a tree with lots of flowers in it. She tells them where she met God too. Before the children drop off to sleep, the stuff of this day has become the substance of their prayer.
-- Dorothy Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices For Opening the Gift of Time (Jossey-Bass: 2001)
* * *
In her message "Standing in a Cloud" from September 18, 2011, Quaker singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer writes about her experience in Dharmasala, India while on tour:
For so many people the Dalai Lama has become a symbol for a more peaceful world, a less violent world, for a daily practice of love. I sense that people come here to get just a little bit closer to those ideas and those hopes. It is hopeful to be here... so many people leaning, yearning for something better, something simple and true -- like love. So many prayers have been said here. Sent into the air on the breeze through colored flags of fabric. I've been standing here on the balcony of this place and you can feel them as they move in the mist.
I think this is the place to be to contemplate what comes next. To ask: "What do we do with all the sorrows of the world?"†"What do we do with all that love we still have for every beloved person, place, or time we have now or have lost?" It seems to me that love can dissipate -- we let it spread out and become a mist over time. Love with no place to go can transform and become something that looks like emptiness or even a fist. But love carried forward is enormously powerful. We can decide to keep all that love vibrant, breathing, and deepening. We can lavish it on our dogs, give it with faithfulness to our partners, friends and family, a bit of land, a river or stream, we can send it out into a worried world to mend the seams where they are pulling thin and worn.
In this week's Old Testament passage, Ruth had a choice to make about what she would do with her sorrow and her love. She chose, as Carrie says, the enormous power of "love carried forward," love that is "vibrant, breathing, and deepening."
What will we do with our sorrows, the world's sorrow? What will we do with our love in world?
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: Let us praise God as long as we live;
People: we will sing praises to our God all our life long.
Leader: Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
People: When their breath departs, they return to the earth.
Leader: Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
People: whose hope is in God who made heaven and earth.
OR
Leader: The earth is God's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;
People: for God has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.
Leader: Who shall ascend the hill of God? And who shall stand in his holy place?
People: Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and who do not swear deceitfully.
Leader: They will receive blessing from God and vindication from the God of their salvation.
People: Such is the company of those who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
"For All the Saints"
found in:
UMH: 711
H82: 287
PH: 526
AAHH: 339
NNBH: 301
NCH: 299
CH: 637
LBW: 174
ELA: 422
"Your Love, O God"
found in:
UMH: 120
ELA: 71
"Lord, Speak to Me"
found in:
UMH: 463
PH: 426
NCH: 531
ELA: 676
"The Gift of Love"
found in:
UMH: 408
AAHH: 522
CH: 526
Renew: 155
"Where Charity and Love Prevail"
found in:
UMH: 549
H82: 581
NCH: 396
LBW: 126
ELA: 359
"Sweet, Sweet Spirit"
found in:
UMH: 334
AAHH: 326
NNBH: 127
NCH: 293
CH: 261
CCB: 7
"All Who Love and Serve Your City"
found in:
UMH: 433
H82: 570/571
PH: 413
CH: 670
LBW: 436
ELA: 724
"What Does the Lord Require"
found in:
UMH: 441
H82: 605
PH: 405
CH: 659
"I Am Loved"
found in:
CCB: 80
"They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love"
found in:
CCB: 78
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who invites all your children to reflect your image: Grant us joy as we celebrate the lives of those who shared your love and grace with us and helped us on our journey with you; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
O God who is love: Grant us the grace to grow in love for you and in love and service to others that we may truly be your saints; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We give you thanks, O God, for those who have come before us in the faith, from those of the biblical witness throughout history to those who have guided us personally. We thank you that they were willing to let you shine in and through their lives. Help us to be open to your Spirit that we may also reflect your love and grace and glory. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to act in love as your saints.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have been created in your image and filled with your Spirit and yet we do not reflect your love and grace as we ought. We are more concerned about what people think of us than we are about what they see of you in us. Forgive us and help us to live out of the abundance of your love that those around us will be touched by your grace. Amen.
Leader: God loves us and claims us as children, reflection of the divine. Know that God desires nothing more than to fill us with love that spills over into the lives of others.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord's Prayer)
We worship and adore you, O God, for you are the one who fills all in all. You are the energy and pulse that moves through all of creation.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have been created in your image and filled with your Spirit and yet we do not reflect your love and grace as we ought. We are more concerned about what people think of us than we are about what they see of you in us. Forgive us and help us to live out of the abundance of your love that those around us will be touched by your grace.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which you have made your presence known to us. We thank you especially for those who have come into our lives and touched us with your grace. We have felt the influence of some of those down through the ages and from others who have walked among us.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your creation and especially for your children who have not felt your loving kindness in their lives. We pray for those who have not had those around them who showed your love but instead showed violence and hatred. We pray that as you move in love among them we may move in love among those around us.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father... Amen.
(or if the Lord's Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children's Sermon Starter
If your worship space has stained-glass windows with biblical or other figures of the faith, talk to the children about how the light coming through the windows makes them beautiful. Similarly, when we let God's light of love shine in us by doing kind acts and saying kind words, we are beautiful as well.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Love Your Neighbor
Mark 12:28-34
Object: a smashed tin can (from the trash or recycle bin)
Good morning, boys and girls! How many of you ever have to carry out the trash? (let the children answer) I brought along some of my trash this morning. This trash is ready to be recycled. This trash makes me think of this morning's lesson.
I want to tell you a story about a little boy who lived next door to an older man. In church the boy heard the story about loving your neighbor as yourself. He wasn't certain that he knew what that meant. He hoped that he loved his neighbor as himself, but he wasn't certain how to do it.
One day he was going out the door to play. It was trash day. Everyone on his street had trash and recycling containers ready to be picked up. He noticed that for some reason his neighbor's trash had been knocked over. The trash was all over the sidewalk. Have any of you ever noticed this on your street? (let them answer) The boy's neighbor was an older man who walked with a cane. It was hard for him to stoop over. Without thinking, the boy went over and picked up the trash that was on the sidewalk. He put the trash back into the container. Then he went on his way. His neighbor was watching from his window. He was very happy to see that the boy picked up his trash. It made the older man feel good about the boy.
Do any of you know why this trash of mine (hold up the can) and my story about the boy picking up the trash reminds me of loving your neighbor? (let them answer) That's right. The boy didn't think about it at all, but he loved his neighbor as himself, didn't he? He loved his neighbor when he picked up the older man's trash. The boy didn't do it so that he would get a reward. He didn't do it because someone asked him. He did it really without thinking. He did it because he loved his neighbor.
Here's what I want you to remember this week. Jesus said that we should love God with all our hearts. Jesus also said that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This week see if there is something you can do for your neighbor. It might be just saying hello to your neighbor. It might be that you may pick up some trash of your neighbor's without even thinking of it. Remember to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, November 4, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
